30-08-2026, 08:05 AM
(30-08-2026, 02:16 AM)Bernd wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Lisa told us that there is no difference in parchment quality between sections. It's all equally bad. How realistic is it that the author(s) acquired bad parchment, and similarly bad parchment decades later? That looks like a bit of a stretch to me. Not impossible, but unlikely. At least I see no evidence for it.
Why is it less likely that someone would source the same quality parchment years later? Is it somehow more likely that after decades that they would suddenly acquire better quality parchment? For all we know, the VMS author may have even made it themselves, explaining the consistently bad quality.
Also, two samples were deliberately taken from a currier A page and a currier B page, due to the possibility that a change in textual properties may have indicated a change in time. As far as I know, those pieces of parchment are also similar in size and quality, so why was it thought possible that they could date differently? It was clearly entirely plausible to the team that two similar pieces of parchment could reasonably date differently, otherwise they would not have thought it worthwhile to check.
(30-08-2026, 02:16 AM)Bernd wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.About the bimodal distribution: The calibration curve is from 2005. I wonder if anything substantial would change when recalibrating the values with a more modern curve. I believe the most recent one is from 2020, maybe there's an even newer one.
A long while ago I downloaded a similar software to the one mentioned in the report (or a newer version, maybe), and using the most modern curve available through the software at the time (maybe 2020?) I believe the results looked much the same. But i'm not professionally trained to use the software, and I may have made a mistake somewhere. It may be valuable to check, though!